Enterprise AR Software Market - Growth, Trends, COVID 19 Impact and Forecasts (2022 - 2027)

The Enterprise AR Software Market is expected to register a CAGR of approximately 28.3% over the forecast period (2021 - 2026). AR has become a powerful tool for a variety of employee-oriented enterprise scenarios as the application of Enterprise AR is expanding, and almost every industry, from manufacturing to education to entertainment, healthcare, field service, and marketing has found ways to apply AR technology to improve the process and productivity.

Key Highlights

• Augmented Reality (AR) is an overlay of computer-generated digital content over the real-world environment and has emerged as one of the biggest technology trends currently and is on the verge of becoming a part of everyday life. Companies are leveraging augmented reality to streamline their workflow, cut down on logistics and operational costs, and improve efficiency.
• Furthermore, the current market scenario has observed a greater focus on creating content and tools with more smartphone compatibility. This is expected to be driven by photorealistic AR, enabled by the combination of software and hardware advances, one of the most significant launches of dedicated AR frameworks in the smartphone operating systems.
• The COVID-19 pandemic has created an unprecedented impact across the global business landscape with widespread lockdowns, brick-and-mortar retail closures, essential ecommerce delivery limitations, and supply chain disruption. However, from a positive perspective, the pandemic has caused an acceleration of remote working and has increased the adoption of cloud infrastructure services and spending on specialized softwares. As the hybrind working model is expected to stay even in the post pandemic age, the enterprise AR software market is expected to gain traction.
• AR software works in conjunction with devices such as tablets, phones, headsets, and more and supports features such as analytics, remote assistance, content management, etc. This is expected to encourage companies having their facilities located at different geographical locations towardsadopting AR softwares as this can help them manage a large setup using a small group of people.

Key Market Trends

Increasing acceptance of AR across industry verticals

• AR has witnessed an increasing implementation in existing applications and platforms, including gamification for customer engagement, AR applications, social media-based marketing, and enterprise collaboration for unified workplace communications (such as Microsoft HoloLens, for assessing insurance risks). In addition, games developers are anticipated to use AR as a differentiator that could encourage new downloads.
• While AR is still over a decade away from achieving its full market potential, technological advancements in the space industry have accelerated the market studied over the past two years. The increasing availability of content and the launch of developer tools, such as ARKit, are driving the growth of this segment. The increasing adoption and availability of the cloud have been major drivers for the AR market, as it provides the platform and infrastructure to address the scalability limitation of on-premise AR experiences.
• For example, the WorkLink platform offered by ScopeAR is an augmented reality application suite that supports smartphones, tablets, and wearables and is designed to ingest any CAD model format, making it easy for leading organizations augment curated procedures over real-world objects to guide a user. It also enables them to alert the user to avoid non-compliance, or worse, a safety incident if a user deviates from the prescribed procedure.
• Furthermore, the precision of indoor location services has grown significantly, which has enabled the use of AR location features for vehicles, campus, and in-building navigation and identification. Image recognition capabilities have allowed enterprises to use AR for object identification and display, by assisting real-time decision making.
• The future of the AR market is expected to be augmented by the amalgamation of the virtual and physical worlds, to generate new, engaging, interactive, and personalized experiences that benefit both customers and the business.

Asia Pacific to Dominate Enterprise AR Market

• Asia-Pacific is one of the most important markets for Enterprise AR technology and is supposed to record the largest growth over the forecast period. The region offers one of the largest enterprise applications markets for AR software. Moreover, the increasing government programs favoring the development of AR technologies are also motivating local vendors to invest in the studied market.
• South Korea is also emerging as one of the significant markets for enterprise AR technologies, owing to the increasing government investments in the market studied and the rising adoption of AR technologies amongst the country’s end-user applications. For instance, in 2020, the LG Uplus Corp., a major South Korean telecom firm, unveiled the world's first 5G-based augmented reality (AR) glass. The product was developed in partnership with Chinese mixed-reality product developer Nreal and chipmaker Qualcomm.
• Furthermore, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a big push for more adoption of enterprise AR technology in the region. The sudden need for virtual meetings, remote collaboration, more efficient workflows and reduced IT costs is working in favour of AR technology in the enterprise. For instance, VeativeLabs headquartered in India offers employees in the power, oil and gas industry a safe training atmosphere wherein they can learn in a simulated world without being exposed to the hazards.
• Although China has emerged as a major player in the gaming sector, Japan is the third-largest market. The country's gaming companies are some of the major adopters of advanced AR technologies at a global level. According to the Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association, the Japanese gaming market was expected to reach approximately JPY 1.59 trillion by fiscal year 2025. Some of the notable Japanese players in AR software space include names such as GrapeCity, Cluster and HADO (Meleap Inc.).
• Furthermore, the healthcare sector in the Asia Pasific region is on the rise and has emerged as one of the key market for the AR technology. AR is not only revolutionizing telehealth, but AR tech is also expected to be incorporated into rehabilitation, treatment methods, and chronic care routines.

Competitive Landscape

The Enterprise AR software market is moderately competitive and consists of several players. The increasing use cases across various industries is expected to attract new players, resulting in increased competition among the players operating in the market during the forecast period. Many companies are increasing their market presence by introducing new products, expanding their operations, or entering into strategic mergers and acquisitions. Some of the key players operating in the market include Seiko Epson Corporation, Librestream, Scope AR, PTC among others.

• July 2021 - Siemens and REFLEKT unveiled Augmented Reality (AR) manuals and training guides for a process-based testbed together with Dow. This allows companies to create AR instructions and training in a short time without any programming knowledge, also using this workers can use visual step-by-step instructions and 3D visualizations to perform service work such as replacing a pump faster and with a lower risk of errors than before.
• August 2021 - ScopeAR announced the partnership with ServiceMax, a leader in asset-centric field service management, to enable a visual knowledge base for industrial work processes. Using the combined platform enable the users to have access to detailed augmented reality work instructions and the ability to initiate live, remote assistance calls, while it provides the capability to enterprise organizations to capture and scale expert knowledge through the creation of work instruction catalogs.

Additional Benefits:

• The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format
• 3 months of analyst support